Rivka Galchen wins 2014 Danuta Gleed Literary Award

The Writers’ Union of Canada presented Rivka Galchen with the 2014 Danuta Gleed Literary Award for her short-fiction collection American Innovations (HarperCollins Canada) at a ceremony in Winnipeg on May 25. A regular contributor to The New Yorker, Galchen’s debut novel, Atmospheric Disturbances(HarperCollins Canada), was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

“We are swept along by the writer’s delightful breadth of knowledge and intellect,” said the jury, comprising authors Shani Mootoo, Susan Swan, and John Vigna. “Cracks in our everyday logic, the slipperiness of our regular life, are revealed. These innovative stories are, ultimately, meditations on the ordinariness, and the bizarreness, of life.”

Runners-up for the award are Eliza Robertson forWallflowers (Hamish Hamilton Canada) and Mireille Silcoff for Chez l’Arabe (House of Anansi Press). Each received $500.